Dear JFK Delta terminal baggage claim,
If there are no longer any restrooms available in this area, you might want to consider removing the signs that continue to direct visitors to said restrooms. On level 1, for instance, there are signs pointing to a locked, “authorized personnel only” door in one corner and a blank wall in the other. Then there are the signs that direct people to an elevator and level 2, where temporary restrooms have supposedly been set up. These signs, however — another of which is on level 2 — point only to a set of glass doors, behind which can clearly be seen security checkpoints for airline passengers, and not restrooms. More importantly, these glass doors are locked, thereby making it impossible to reach said restrooms, if they are in fact not simply figments of your collective imagination.
Waiting around in the airport baggage claim for an hour and a half — in my case, while waiting for my parents’ flight from Seattle last night to finally land — is tedious enough without the added aggravation of being led on a wild goose chase for nonexistent toilets. Obviously, I should have brought a book with me; but I shouldn’t have also needed to bring along a catheter. But, more to the point, if there are no bathrooms, there should be no bathroom signs.
Just a thought. Thanks.
I hear that if you can pick through the lock on that door on level 1, you wind up in John Malkovich’s head.
My dad would have chewed someone out while thretening to piss on their floor due to prostate problems. People move in a hurry, then.
Yeah, I wasn’t that bad off. I wasn’t especially uncomfortable or anything, just bored. And, honestly, it wasn’t the missing restrooms that bothered me. It was the signs that nobody had thought to take down, coupled with the signs that somebody had put up to cover for the first signs — but which were themselves now obsolete and led nowhere.
It’s almost funny: the signs at JFK got less helpful the closer I got to my destination. Finding my way around the airport, finding my way back to the right terminal if I made a wrong turn — this was relatively easy. I think it would be hard to get irretrievably lost without really trying. But finding the parking, then finding the lost closest to the right terminal, and then following the signs within baggage claim — this was sort of a downward spiral of un-helpfulness.
Never wait inside at JFK! Just drive around in that infinite loop holding pattern until your friend’s plane arrives.. Or park yourself on the off-ramp with the limos.
I suspect that you were caught in a similar infinite loop holding pattern while actually within the terminal.